Add automatic Qtile grouping and usage telemetry

[lost-rob0t]

Summary

Adds a clickable AUTO control to the Qtile top bar and structured usage telemetry for later workflow optimization.

The button always displays AUTO in black text. Its background indicates state:

• green: automatic group management enabled
• pink/red: automatic group management disabled

Automatic group mode

When enabled, the mode:

• immediately organizes existing recognized windows into their configured groups
• routes newly managed windows to their configured groups
• re-enforces routing when recognized windows are moved into another normal group
• switches groups with more than three windows to the max layout
• restores each group’s configured default layout when its window count drops to three or fewer
• ignores scratchpad groups

When disabled, automatic routing and layout enforcement stop without moving windows back, allowing normal manual window movement and layout selection.

Usage telemetry

Qtile writes structured JSONL events to:

~/.local/state/qtile/telemetry.jsonl

The telemetry records:

• the configured keymap at session start
• actual keybind and key-chord usage
• managed, focused, moved, routed, floating, and closed windows
• window title, WM_CLASS, PID, geometry, group, screen, and layout
• group additions and removals
• layout changes and window counts
• group and screen changes
• AUTO mode changes
• startup, restart, and shutdown events

Logs rotate at 25 MiB with four retained backups.

A summarizer produces compact JSON suitable for LLM analysis:

python ~/.config/qtile/scripts/qtile-telemetry-summary.py > ~/qtile-telemetry-report.json

The report ranks keybind usage, focused and managed applications, unmatched applications, group destinations, layout changes, automatic routes, and group or screen usage.

The raw log includes window titles, so private browser page, document, or terminal names may appear and should be reviewed before sharing.

Implementation

• centralizes application mappings in auto_group_routes
• adds safe WM_CLASS matching through routed_group
• synchronizes the AUTO state across both bars
• records explicit automatic routing decisions
• instruments all configured Qtile key bindings without replacing their existing commands
• isolates telemetry hooks in qtile_telemetry.py
• adds scripts/qtile-telemetry-summary.py
• documents configuration and privacy behavior in qtile.org

Validation

• python -m py_compile config.py qtile_telemetry.py scripts/qtile-telemetry-summary.py
• stubbed Qtile configuration import
• tested existing-window and new-window routing
• tested switching to max at four windows
• tested restoring the default layout at three windows
• tested synchronized AUTO widgets on both bars
• tested black AUTO text in both states
• tested key instrumentation and JSONL event creation
• tested telemetry summarizer output

qtile check -c config.py still needs to be run on a system with Qtile installed.